Akintola Williams tasks accountants, others on professionalism, transparency

THE doyen of the accounting profession, Dr. Akintola Williams, has called on accountants, engineers and other professional bodies in the country to display high level of professionalism and transparency in the discharge of their duties.Specifically, Williams stressed that if Nigerian professionals could display thorough professionalism in their respective offices, within and outside the country, such conduct could go a long way to launder Nigeria's image.Williams, who spoke in Lagos at the weekend, as the guest lecturer at the 92nd birthday celebration of Nigeria's first telecoms engineer, Victor Haffner, noted that, true professionalism would take Nigeria out of its doldrums.At the event, which was organised by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), he said: 'The accountancy profession to which I belong is comparatively new in Nigeria, unlike engineering of which dated back to the days of the Egyptians who erected the pyramids and the sphinx. Discrimination on the part of accountancy firms in offering training facilities in their firms to Nigerians accounted for failure to get Nigerians qualified early enough. I paced the streets of the city of London for three months, looking for firms that would accept me for training, but none.'That made me determined to see that the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) was formed so as to offer opportunities for Nigerians to 'get trained and qualified as accountants. I am not sure that engineers suffered similar discrimination.'Unlike the legal and medical professions, and I believe the same applies to engineering, the accountancy profession is self-regulatory and self- financing,' he stated.Besides, he said the lack of financial support from the government made accountants to tighten their belts and relied on their members and students for the funds they required to build their headquarter in Lagos.According to him, accountants are liable for errors in their work and frauds, which they ought to have detected in carrying out their work, but fail to do so. They may therefore be liable to heavy damages in a court of law, 'although they tend to insure against such risks,' he added.
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